An early Eta Carina

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Stupid weather, it's cloudy up to midnight but then thins out until near dawn. Even at 3 am the air temp was 27C ! I'm surprised I can get anything with it. Anyway, this is Eta Carina from my new toy, 8" F4 Newtonian, steel version. I love it and hate it all at the same time lol. This beast is going to take some taming, so please excuse the worts that I'm sure will plague all my images while I get used to the thing. The flat still needs some adjustment. I've been spoiled by my nice refractor.

Acquisition details: 107 x 30 seconds between clouds at ISO 1600, 8" F4 Bintel Newt, Baader MPCC MKIII, HEQ5 Pro unguided, standard off the shelf not modified, not cooled Pentax K-5. Image has not been cropped. This is 100% of the frame, edge warts and all.

Warty version at astrobin. ---> http://astrob.in/137046/0/

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

looks good to me Kevin!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

All hail the mighty Nebula in Carina ommmm

Let the storm begin

[multiweb (Marc)]

Superb. Gorgeous colours.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by rustigsmed

looks good to me Kevin!

Thanks Russell. I must have successfully hidden most of the warts then.

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

All hail the mighty Nebula in Carina ommmm

Let the storm begin

We could do with a storm or 10 here. It's so hot! On the plus side it's too dry for mosquitoes so I can image stuff.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Superb. Gorgeous colours.

Thanks Marc. If only I could remember how I got them that way lol.

[Rex]

Beautiful shot Kevin, I'd say your getting pretty used to the new set up already. Really nice colours.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

That's a beautiful Eta Kevin!

Good star colour coming through.
Just a little more saturation and unsharp masking will make it perfect.

Cheers,
Justin.

[Stevec35 (Steve)]

That's a pretty reasonable Eta Kevin. Like the colour.

Cheers

Steve

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by Rex

Beautiful shot Kevin, I'd say your getting pretty used to the new set up already. Really nice colours.

Thanks Rex!

Originally Posted by tilbrook@rbe.ne

That's a beautiful Eta Kevin!

Good star colour coming through.
Just a little more saturation and unsharp masking will make it perfect.

Cheers,
Justin.

Thanks Justin. What method do you use for unsharp masking? I generally don't ever sharpen or use an UM on my images as it just increases noise.

[PeterEde (Peter)]

Very nice
Must get back to this one soon

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by Stevec35

That's a pretty reasonable Eta Kevin. Like the colour.

Cheers

Steve

Thanks Steve!

Originally Posted by PeterEde

Very nice
Must get back to this one soon

Thanks Peter. Yes it's a nice easy one for summer.

[RobF (Rob)]

Nice work Kevin. I think you'll have a lot of satisfaction with the scope once you get to know each other better.

[RickS (Rick)]

Not that warty Nice work, Kevin.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks Rob and Rick. Glad to know I've disguised the warts somewhat.

Collimation is a continuing challenge with F4. All my old slow Newts were so easy by comparison.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Thanks Rex!



Thanks Justin. What method do you use for unsharp masking? I generally don't ever sharpen or use an UM on my images as it just increases noise.

Hi Kevin,

I use Louie Atalasidis's method for masking in Photo Shop.
Basically I make a copy and apply unsharp masking until I'm happy with the result in bright area's, it will be noisy in the faint area's, then following Louie's method and blend in the unsharp area to the original image.
Usually takes me 3 or 4 goes to get it right.

http://www.atalas.net/masks-for-photoshop

Cheers,

Justin.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Hi Kevin,

Hope you don't mind but had a fiddle with your image.

Applied some more saturation.
Selective colour adjustment.
Unsharp mask and contrast, plus softened the stars a little.

There's a lot of colour contrast in Eta worth bringing out.
Of course the colour saturation is to your own taste.

Cheers,

Justin.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Thanks for the link Justin, I'll have a look a little later when this headache clears off.

The repo is probably a bit too saturated for me at present. But I'll take a look a bit later when, you guessed it, this headache clears off. Rotten headaches.

I find saturation a tricky one because my brain definitely does compensate and I can get used to both over and under saturated images if I stare at them for too long.

The collimating tool arrived in the mail and now the scope is nicely done. Was easy to do too. Going to love this scope me thinks.

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by cometcatcher

Thanks for the link Justin, I'll have a look a little later when this headache clears off.

The repo is probably a bit too saturated for me at present. But I'll take a look a bit later when, you guessed it, this headache clears off. Rotten headaches.

Hope you headaches clear up Kevin!

Must be a pain staring at the computer monitor, makes it hard to concentrate.

Cheers,
Justin.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

The headaches come on every evening. I think I stare at the computer monitor too much during the day. But it's too hot to do anything outside during the day in this heat.

I think I like the repo better this morning. The original could do with a little bit more saturation. Somewhere between the two perhaps.